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Neil Blomkamp is South African and you might therefore expect him to be a chauvinist racist. But Niell is a geek, and that has overridden his social predispositions. Instead he’s followed a band vegan Boers on a notable trail of digitalism and responsibility!
Neill is only 30 years old (born 1979!), and has worked on various ad projects as special effects supervisor, accumulating skills that have allowed him to assemble hand-held analogue with believable digital effects. More recently he has directed some bigger-budget enterprises, including a Halo preview (you are an idiot or a girl if you don't know about this) and District 9 with Peter Jackson. Which old Wacko derived from Blomkamp’s original, 6-minute short ‘Alive in Joburg’. In which I just noticed D9’s protagonist, Shartlo Copley at 3:18. Gr8.
And he did the Citroen C4 advert with the transformer rip-offs (a transformer would never morph into a C4! Don’t mess about. F-16s and Mustangs, son), and David Guetta’s track over them!? Check his filmography on wikipedia.
But anyway, the main point of this post is that Neill has conceptualised and visualised one of the best exo-suits ever, easily among the greats of Matrix’s APU and Aliens’ Powerloader. Enjoy it.
installed at the San Jose Museum of Art, Robots:Evolution of a Cultural Icon, Michael Salter 's 22 ft robot is constructed from polystyrene packing materials (styrofoam). The massive installation examines the development of robot iconography in fine art over the past 50 years. Associate professor of digital arts at the University of Oregon since 2005, he has been building these fabulous sculptures for several years, each one growing in size to suit the available exhibition space.
Recycling the discarded packaging creates reflective sustainable imagery, but is also formally ideal, as the expanded foam creates the impression of extruded or stamped metal components, like a prototypical scale-model. Sadly though, Salter’s unique creations are usually destroyed because no one has bought one yet or figured out how to get one through a gallery door. Gr8
Time-lapse of Salter working with professionals at the San Jose Museum of Modern Art to install one of his trademark styrobots
[Above: A robot writing religious texts; robot rides, and a robot trebuchet]
These industrial grade robots, such as the FANUC and KUKA shown typically have around 6 axis, and can have a number of attachments mounted to the heads, performing assembly, fixturing, machine tending/part transfer, spot welding, material removal, Paletizing/picking/packing, material handling, dispensing. Or programmable hilarity. They are surprisingly versatile, and the little robo-slags will do whatever you tell them, if you're familiar with their 'software'.
